


Scars

by Pragnificent (PragmaticHominid)



Series: Falling Further [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 02:49:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8780269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PragmaticHominid/pseuds/Pragnificent
Summary: On the eve of their first kill since they arrived at the quiet Cuban beach house, Will contemplates how he and Hannibal came to be here together and the scars they earned along the way.





	

Will bent to lash the boat to the dock, and felt the scar in his belly twinge as his muscles shifted, a dull fishhook tugging at him from the inside.

It didn’t hurt exactly, though for a very long time it had, the white-hot dizzying pain of it eventually fading to a dull ache. These days the scar still did not feel like a part of himself, and sometimes he imagined that the blade was still inside of him, a foreign intrusion resting quietly within his flesh. The right side of his face pulled up in an uneasy grimace at the sensation, nearly mirroring the left side, where the scar carved into his cheek pulled his upper lip back to show his teeth.

His expressions are distorted now in a way that they had not been before. Vague frowns become snarls. When he tries to smile his face takes the shape of a leer to spite him, a startling sort of mixed message; friendly and open on one side, or at least trying to be, vicious disfigurement on the other. His speech, too, has become mangled, but he is learning to speak around the scars.  

For a long time mirrors were hard on him. He’d broken every mirror in the beach house when they had first come here, working his way from room to room in a methodical opiate daze, but he couldn’t say now or then to what extent he had been driven to do so by his own ruined reflection; Dolarhyde had been strong inside of him then, and his ghost was still with Will now, though the mirrors had been replaced long ago.

Will is no longer handsome, if he'd ever been, and sometimes he looks at the fishhook-shaped scar, the crooked red blaze that ran up from the base of his jaw, veering sharply right beneath his cheekbone, curling his lip into a constant flash of teeth, and he thinks that it is fair - it only reflects what is inside of him, all the things that are cold and vicious and made sharp to cut and which even now so unspeakably ugly to Will’s own inner eye, every shadow that Hannibal has drawn out into the light, groomed, nurtured, fed.

He’s known nearly all his life that he has within himself all the parts needed to make murder, but Hannibal's proven it, and now that it has been proven Will knows that they will kill again.

Things have been quiet here for nearly a year, but there iss a new tourist in one of the houses down the street from them.

The man had been seated near Will and Hannibal at a nearby outdoor cafe the day before, and Will sensed the man’s eyes clawing at him nearly at once. He'd lifted his eyes to meet the stare, unblinking in the wake of the waves of hatred that came at him from the man’s eyes, and Will saw himself and Hannibal the way that the stranger saw them, the layers of disgust.

Will held the stare until he felt Hannibal’s hand brush his wrist. He murmured to Will, voice low and intimate, an innocuous comment on the menu, and Will turned and met his eyes and understood at once that Hannibal had been just as sensitive to the stranger’s stare, and that there was a reason why he was so studiously avoiding being noticed noticing the tourist, and understanding this Will shifted his chair so he no longer faced the stranger.

He could only see the man from the corner of his eye but Will’s own face was visible to him in profile, the puckered scar gleaming pinkly under the bright noon sun. Will leaned in to grasp Hannibal’s wrist gently with one hand, slipping his other hand into Hannibal’s hand, smiling faintly with the right side of his face when Hannibal’s fingers closed around it.

With his other hand Will could feel the scar where Matthew Brown had cut Hannibal’s wrist. Those scars hadn’t tanned the way the rest of him had. The skin there was pale and very soft, and Will ran the side of his thumb along the length of it, thinking.

He was no longer showing off to get under the tourist’s skin, though Will had not forgotten that he was there. He imagined that very soon the stranger will be the only thing that he'd think about for quite a long time, once the three of them have come to know one another intimately, and inventoried himself to see if he would be able to brace himself for the squalls of conflicting emotions that will provoke. He wass almost certain that he knew what sound the stranger would make when Will cut him, and he's sick in his heart with self-loathing and disgust, and his heart beat faster with an eagerness to find if he was right.

He was still stroking the scar along the inside of Hannibal’s wrist. There’s nerve damage in the left hand, and sometimes it trembles on its own accord, especially after Hannibal has done a heavy piece of work, but those hands are still nearly preternaturally strong, big and strong enough to wrap themselves around Will’s neck and choke the life out him. The hands are gentle with him now, but they haven’t always been and they might not always remain so, but when they left the cafe his fingers weree laced around Hannibal’s.

Thinking back on this now, feeling the scar in his belly twist inside him again as he lifts his creel full of sea bass and the tackle box and remembering the feel under his thumb of the scars that he had caused to be made on Hannibal’s body, he feels an uneasy sense of vague bafflement that they should be here together now, a sort of mystified wonder at the irresolvable tangle of need - both his own and Hannibal’s - that had brought him here and which hold him.

The plans are laid. They have discussed, at length, the best way to go about it. Will had gotten intensely drunk, but only after the important things had been settled.

He’ll grill the fish when he got home, Will decides. Tonight he’ll claim the kitchen for himself for a change, and put together a meal that isas straightforward and simple, and once they've finished eating - once it iss late enough and once he’s had a chance to drink enough to stomach the the night’s work without losing his nerve or his dinner - they will go out.


End file.
